Nathvade_village
Nathvade village by Damu Ravindra Pawar, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

If you have culture then you have relationships. If there is no culture there is no relationships. If there is no duties, then why do you need to be involved with the other person, other than they can help you do what you are doing? But if it is a matter of “I do these duties, they do those duties,” and it makes a complete unit, then there is some meaning to the relationship that there is an element of sacrifice, there is an element of working for someone else’s benefit. Otherwise it is just “I am doing this and I don’t want to do this alone, so if someone else also takes part in it then I get what I want, and then, nice if they also get what they want,” that would be considered more cultured. But it is not actually cultured, it is only business. Culture starts when you have a nature and you do that. The knife cuts the vegetables, the strainer strains the things, the water washes the vegetables, the spoon stirs the vegetables, the pot holds the vegetables while they are on the fire. Then you have something that is complete, does that make sense?

So, even though Kṛṣṇa can do anything and everything, He doesn’t. He is the son of Mahārāja Nanda. He can do anything because He is God. But he goes to sleep when [Mother Yaśodā] puts Him to sleep. He gets up when she wakes Him. He eats what she wants Him to eat. He wears what she dresses Him in. Do you understand? So this idea that we are devotees and so we are beyond the rules, that’s nice as tattva, as philosophy, but as culture it doesn’t work. Do you understand?

That’s why Westerners don’t have a culture because there is no idea that I am restricted to a particular sphere of activities because of my particular position. No, this verse that everyone should stick and do their own duty, that’s like the bane of the Western mind. “It is far better to discharge one’s own duties, even though faultily than another’s duties perfectly.” [Bhagavad-gītā 3.35] Because that’s the point, “Well, I can do it better.” “The women should do this, the men will do that.” “No, but I can do what the men are doing better.” That’s just… This verse is like the direct opposite of what the Western mind feels is the real purpose of their endeavor. So, great, it gets things done economically. You could say, one one level, economically, the Western culture does quite well because the First World does better that the Second World economically, better than the Third World, better than the Fifth World, like this.

But as far as culture goes, we generally find that the further down we go, where they are generally not so good at modern culture, where this verse is not like their motto, then their social and personal interactions are of a much greater quality. Not necessarily sophisticated, but the depth of actual feelings and emotions is much greater. But economically they are not necessarily doing so well. So then we can see, when we say “artificial economy” we don’t mean just that we are trading in something that doesn’t exist, some kind of future derivative of this and that, something that may be grown if somebody did grow things, like that. But the point is, it is artificial because the economic element takes precedence over the actual human culture, that’s what’s artificial because for the jīva by nature, the human culture is standard.

From Bhagavad-gītā Thematic #53, 1 March 2012, Bhaktivedānta Academy, Śrī Māyāpura. This passage is starting at 11m 40s

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